


Wrapped in a Mystery

by Ee4ee



Series: Confluence [1]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Hiking, Interspecies Awkwardness, Interspecies Sex, Language Barrier, Medicine, Pokephilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 04:56:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9162976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ee4ee/pseuds/Ee4ee
Summary: Two girls out hiking come across an injured Blaziken. While nursing him to health, they discover some interesting quirks about him. Sometimes, figuring out the motivations of others can be hard, and even your own might be clouded.





	

The crunch of leaves punctuated nature’s silence, joining the occasional cry of Johtoan wildlife. Winds cooled by the sea, a dozen miles distant, did nothing to deter two people walking over autumn’s efforts. Pokémon couldn’t assist it, warded off by the hikers’ Repel. The two took advantage of their freedom to take in the coastal forest’s afternoon sights. At least one of them did; the other was too busy messing with her watch, again, to notice.

“Sierra, just leave it alone. You’ll get used to it eventually.” Laide looked back at her traveling companion from where she stood on an outcropping, surveying the surrounding area below.

Sierra twisted her bulky timepiece to examine her skin underneath. “They could have made it more comfortable.”

“Comfortable or not, it’s an essential piece of equipment,” Laide replied, climbing down from her perch. “Your cell phone isn’t going to last long enough to tell you the time a week from now, or the date. It’s easy to forget when you don’t have a schedule to follow.”

“I understand that, I just wish it was a little more convenient to wear. I can’t just keep it in a pocket?”

“And panic when you realize it’s fallen out and have to retrace your steps for a mile or three? It has a strap for a reason. C’mon, let’s keep moving.”

Sierra sighed and scrambled over to where Laide had jumped off her large rock. As the two continued their trek, she spoke again, more softly. “Thank you, again, for taking me out here and teaching me this stuff. I don’t mean to seem ungrateful.”

“Don’t worry about it!” Laide’s prior annoyance vanished from her voice. “If you’re serious about this exploring thing, you’re going to have to learn some survival skills some time, and I could always - hold up. Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

Laide stalked forward, now hardly making a sound even through the fallen leaves. Though obedient, Sierra tried to look ahead to see what could have caught her friend’s attention. Glimpses of red filtered through underbrush, and hints of a char reached her nose. After several moments, more faint footsteps heralded Laide’s return. She waved Sierra over and held a finger to her lips before disappearing again. Sierra followed her, wincing at the noise she made in the process.

In the middle of a small clearing lay two pokémon. The farther of the two was little more than a cinder, clearly the source of the smell. The closer one bore no burns on its red and beige plumage, but sported several slashes. A deep furrow ran across the front of its left thigh. Sierra stopped short when she saw the grisly scene, but Laide waived her over to where she knelt beside the less-harmed pokémon. “Quick quiz, what pokémon are these?” she asked when Sierra finally started moving closer again.

The crisped one had an angular head, blade-like arms, and remains of an insectoid abdomen. The more intact one had a humanoid form with some bird-like features, but no name came to Sierra’s mind. “That one is a Scyther, I think. I don’t know what this one is.”

“Well, it was a Scyther. Pretty dead, now. This one’s a Blaziken, and it’s still alive. We should help it.”

“What?” Sierra said, shocked.

“Here, look.” Laide gently shifted the Blaziken just enough to allow Sierra to see a yellow bandana tied around its left bicep. “Might be a trainer’s pokémon. Blaziken aren’t native to these parts, and a lot of trainers who stick mostly to wilderness mark their pokémon like this in case they somehow become separated. Oh, see, this is a perfect example.”

She stopped moving the pokémon when she revealed a metallic pin fastened to the scarf, in the shape of a silver pokéball decorated with gold wings and an exaggerated gold center button. A folded piece of paper rested between the band and its arm, flanked by a couple short pieces of charcoal. “Has to belong to a trainer. They’ll come back for it, but we should try and fix it up until they do. As few and far between as humans are in places like these, we need to help each other.”

Though it made sense, Sierra still took a moment to think it over as Laide gently let the Blaziken down again. “Alright. What should I do?”

Laide stood. “Look it over, make sure that gash on its thigh is the worst of it. If there’s nothing else, we should be able to move it without problems.”

“Wait, we’re moving it?” Sierra asked as she knelt down where Laide stood.

Laide threw a thumb over her shoulder at the Scyther’s remains. “Dead Meat over there is going to attract predators or scavengers, Repel or not, and without pokémon of our own we won’t be able to protect ourselves. We won’t move it far, since we want its trainer to be able to find us whenever they come back around, but we need to get far enough away we’re not going to be noticed by whatever comes for that crunchy snack.” Laide turned and considered the charred corpse. “Or we could eat it ourselves, I guess.”

“I’m not eating a big dead bug,” Sierra said, giving Laide a flat look.

“I don’t know how to clean or prepare it anyway. I’ll be back when I find a decent spot. Check out that paper if you get a moment, it might have instructions or identification.” Laide checked her compass before setting off into the forest.

Sierra looked back down at the Blaziken, eyes darting across its body. She lifted one of the Blaziken’s claws gingerly with just her fingertips. A puncture wound on its forearm drew her suspicion, but she couldn’t determine its severity. She rolled the pokémon over halfway to examine its back, finding a long but shallow slash. The rest of its injuries, besides the one to its thigh, looked superficial to her untrained eyes. Besides its current wounds, the Blaziken sported a great many scars. Those on its arms were most obvious, but gaps in its plumage betrayed others. The damage to its thigh looked like it would turn out worse than any of them, but not by a large margin.

With Laide’s warning about later predators in mind, Sierra looked about the area. A decent measure of dried blood matted the grass around its leg. A number of its feathers were scattered near where it lay. With no Laide in sight, Sierra contented herself with collecting them. Many were beige feathers nearly as long as her arm, which she figured belonged to the strange crest running down either side of its back. Most of the rest were shorter red or yellow ones that might have been dislodged when it sustained its other wounds.

The folded-up paper pinned behind its armband drew her attention. Pulling it out dislodged one of the charcoal sticks, which upon closer inspection appeared rough enough to be handmade. Sierra carefully slid it back into the armband and unfolded the piece of paper, puzzling at its slight discoloration.

She was still staring at it when Laide returned. “I found a place. What’s it say?”

“Nothing. It’s a map. Why would a pokémon have a map?”

Laide rushed to Sierra’s side to look at the paper, pulling out her own map when she stopped to compare. The pokémon’s incomplete map did not provide a high level of detail, but what information it did display was incredibly accurate. “Its trainer should have a map already, they wouldn’t need one.” Laide looked up from the two maps. “Maybe they wanted the pokémon to carry one just in case it got lost? I wouldn’t believe a pokémon could read it, maybe that’s why it’s so simple.”

Sierra grabbed the paper out of Laide’s hands, folded it up, and inserted it back into the pokémon’s armband. “Doesn’t matter right now. It’s alright, I think. It isn’t bleeding too badly anymore, the thigh is the worst of it.”

Laide sighed and retrieved a folded tarp from her pack. After partially spreading it on the ground, she beckoned Sierra over. “Help me move it onto this.” As Sierra also knelt to join her, Laide noticed the larger feathers sticking up from her backpack. “Collecting souvenirs already?”

Sierra shrugged as she repositioned the Blaziken’s legs one at a time. “It didn’t feel right leaving them here.”

With their new patient on a makeshift stretcher, they slowly lifted the laden tarp. Laide steered them off towards the direction she came from. Before long they found themselves in another, even smaller clearing, nothing more than a break in the foliage where a couple trees may have fallen with no replacements. They placed their payload next to one of the trees surrounding it, and shrugged off their backpacks to lean them by the trunk. Laide maneuvered the Blaziken off the tarp, and handed the tarp to Sierra. “Want to make us a shelter while I fix it up?”

Sierra looked at the tree they sheltered against as she took the tarp. “Can I borrow your rope?” Laide smiled and fetched it from the outside of her backpack, tossing the coil neatly around Sierra’s outstretched arm. Sierra fetched her own coil as she walked around the tree for a better look, threading the rope through the tarp’s eyelets.

Arranging for a roof required little more than creative use of some low, sturdy branches, and wrangling the tarp over the top of them. Though Sierra was interested in Laide’s work, she knew there wasn’t much she could do to help. Still, she stole several glances over while she worked. By the time Laide called out that she was finished, Sierra was contemplating a moderately-sized stick she had found. She stopped by their patient as she walked back to retrieve Laide’s hatchet.

The Blaziken now rested with its legs propped on Laide’s rolled up sleeping bag. “What if it doesn’t wake up tonight?” Sierra asked.

“I’ll learn to love snoozing in the dirt. Nice roof you’ve made us.”

Sierra hacked at the stick a couple times to fashion a rough stake, which she used to anchor the rope presently held in place by a rock. “I can’t tell you what kind of tree this is, but that was just an assembly problem.” Several other sticks suffered the same fate as she secured the remaining ends. “This stuff I can do at least.”

“You’re in charge of making camp from now on,” Laide laughed, before turning her attention back to her patient and indicating the white bandage around its thigh. “I don’t have any pokémon medicine in my first aid kit, so this is about all we can do for him until his trainer shows up.”

“Him, his?”

Laide looked back at Sierra, grinning. “Yep, I checked.”

“I can’t believe you.”

“Hey, these things are useful to know,” Laide shrugged and started repacking her kit. “Stay away from males during mating season and females during rearing season, could save your life.”

“Is he going to be dangerous when he wakes up?” Sierra said as she sat under her handiwork, leaning against her backpack.

“A trained pokémon? Nah. Unless they belong to one of those criminal types, they’re well-trained to not attack people. He might try to run, but I doubt he’ll be able to get very far. Might be smart to not get too close anyway.” Laide replaced her kit in her backpack before sitting and leaning on it herself, next to Sierra. “So much for hiking out as far as we can.”

“It’s fine, we’re doing something important here. You said we should help others who come out this far, that’s a good enough lesson itself.” Sierra paused a moment, looking at the pokémon. “You think when their trainer comes back, they can get us some pokémon in return?”

“I think you shouldn’t expect any reward. You help others out here because it’s decent, because it’s expected, and because you might need help yourself someday.”

“It’d be nice though, and we do have some balls. I’m a little jealous.”

“Sure, but we graduated a year ago, we’re a little old to be some professor’s charity case, and we don’t know any trainers well enough to let them weaken pokémon for us to chuck stuff at.” Laide snorted. “Join the Rangers or the Army or something, maybe you’ll get lucky and be assigned one. I’ll be happy with my Repels.”

Sierra continued to stare at the pokémon before them. “I wonder if the Army has any Blazikens.”

* * *

An unfamiliar sound joined the quiet rustle of Laide taking inventory. Sierra opened her eyes just before Laide tapped her on the shoulder, and saw her friend pointing to their patient beyond.

Barely visible, as the sun had fled while Sierra wasn’t looking, Blaziken slowly propped itself up on its arms and looked around. He took in his surroundings with sluggish turns of his head while one claw groped at the pin fixed to his armband. He looked towards the pair of humans. After several moments, his eyes found Sierra’s, then Laide’s. Then he tried to pick himself up with a sudden lunge, only to collapse back to the ground immediately with a cry.

“No, wait, we’re not going to hurt you!” Sierra said, cutting off Laide mumbling under her breath.

“If you can understand us, take it easy. You got bashed up pretty bad,” Laide followed, louder now.

Blaziken sat upright, clutching his thigh and eyes squeezed shut. Through hissing breaths, he emitted a short but varied string of trills, growls, and similar sounds.

“Did you hear that? He can speak!” Sierra gasped at Laide.

“I think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself,” Laide replied, squinting at their charge.

“Hey,” Sierra called out to him, “can you say that again?”

Blaziken looked at her then, but said nothing.

Even as her heart sank, Laide asked, “Can you understand us or not?”

This drew his attention, and after a long moment, he nodded slowly. He then locked eyes with Sierra and repeated the same sequence of sounds, but slower and clearer.

“See? Speech!”

“No language I’ve ever heard before.”

“But it’s not,” Sierra waved a hand around in the air vaguely, “just pokémon noises. A lot of the sounds are distinct and he repeated it back exactly. It has to be a language of some sort.”

“Pokémon don’t have a language. His trainer must have taught him something like one, or maybe they’re just foreign.”

“Can’t be foreign, or he wouldn’t be able to understand us.” Sierra got to her hands and knees, closing half the distance between her and the curiosity presented to her. Blaziken leaned back on his far arm away from her, but didn’t try to flee again. “Where are you from?” she asked him. He stared back and uttered only a couple words.

“Try yes or no questions,” Laide supplied.

“Are you from far away?” Blaziken nodded after a delay, faster this time than his last answer.

“Another country?” Sierra shifted to a kneeling position. This question elicited only a shrug.

“I don’t expect a pokémon to understand geography, map or no map,” Laide mumbled, still leaning against her pack and the tree.

Blaziken’s gaze darted to her, and he narrowed his eyes while barking out a single word. Sierra looked to her friend as well, though with a little less hostility.

Laide shrugged in response, before standing up. “You two have fun with the language barrier, I’m going to find him something to eat. I saw some decent berry bushes not far from here.” She ducked out from under the edge of the tarp and flicked her flashlight on, checking her compass and walking off into the encroaching night.

Now realizing just how dark it was getting, Sierra looked beyond Blaziken to where Laide had earlier set up firewood. She dug around in her pack for a lighter, pulling out a striker instead when she couldn’t find it, and thanked Laide for insisting she pack redundantly. Kneeling beside the firewood, she held the striker upside down over the pile and squeezed, sending sparks cascading down. Nothing happened.

Blaziken had been watching her carefully, but the shower of sparks alerted him to her intent. Sierra watched as he twisted himself – she caught a glimpse of a wince – over to stick one claw into the pile. Flames leapt up from his wrist, quickly igniting the wood around. The burst of flame drew another batch of sparks from her striker, which she quickly withdrew. Sierra met his gaze for only a moment before looking down to the ground. “Ah, thanks. Sorry.”

He emitted a satisfied chirp before uttering a short string of his foreign words again.

“I can’t understand anything you’re saying. Just relax, that Scyther really roughed you up.” Blaziken looked around again, this time scanning the edge of the clearing. “No, no it’s, uh…” Once more beside her backpack, Sierra placed the striker back inside and fished out her compass. After looking at it and doing a quick mental calculation, she held an arm out towards the appropriate direction. “It was back that way. Don’t worry, you gave it way worse than it gave you.” With another satisfied chirp, Blaziken resumed his original position, though this time using Laide’s sleeping bag as a pillow.

“You managed to light it this time?” Laide’s voice came from the other side of the tree trunk. When she came into view she fished a handful of berries from a jacket pocket.

“No, he did. He talked some more, too. I wish I knew what he was saying.”

“Don’t get your hopes up. He won’t be sticking around long enough to teach us.” Laide dropped the berries next to Blaziken, who acknowledged her only with a look. As Laide sat down beside her, Sierra watched as Blaziken separated the berries into two piles, and started chowing through one.

“You can’t afford to be picky,” Laide said to him. “You’re going to need energy to heal.” Blaziken didn’t respond.

“I can take what he doesn’t eat, and give him some of mine,” Sierra said, poking through her bag for food of her own. She pulled out a cereal bar and a pack of jerky, unwrapping the former and placing it next to the untouched berries, which she scooped back towards her, then looked at Laide. “Are these poisonous?”

Laide laughed. “I might be hard on you sometimes, but I’m not that bad, am I? I’d have told you!”

Sierra sampled a couple while she opened her pack of jerky, then quickly tore through the rest before finally starting in on her own food. She looked up to see Blaziken demolishing the snack she traded him almost as fast.

“He’ll eat that at least. Let’s get bedding down. I ate already, I bet he’s not going to be awake much longer, and I saw you dozing off yourself earlier.” Laide said.

“I was just resting my eyes, I could still hear everything!” Sierra replied as she unsnapped her sleeping bag from her backpack. When he saw what Sierra was doing, Blaziken picked himself up enough to roll Laide’s sleeping bag over. He watched the two girls unbind them and lay them out, making a sound which Sierra couldn’t tell was one of his words or not.

“Oh, please, I bet you’ll be out like a light. Lay them out side-by-side. If you keep to yourself, Blaziken can sleep across the ends.” To emphasize her point, Laide slipped into her bag and brought her knees to her chest, still sitting up.

Sierra looked at Blaziken, remembering the wince she saw before, then got to her knees and moved towards him. “Let me help you over, you’ll be more comfortable.” Once behind him, she hooked her arms under his shoulders. He stiffened in her grip, but when he tried to put weight on his injured leg, he buckled and sagged back into her arms. “Stop it, I’m trying to help!”

Blaziken made a growl-like noise in his throat but no longer resisted as she tried to work him towards the sleeping bags. He was taller than their sleeping bags were long, so the ends pushed together was poorly suited for his frame. Nevertheless, he made another one of his contented chirps when his upper body rested atop them, sounding almost as happy as Sierra when she finally took her hiking boots off.

Laide took advantage of ready access to Blaziken’s leg to make sure the bandages still held, and he drew his head up to watch. “You’re going to have to wear this awhile, big guy. No more bugs for you,” she told him. Blaziken snorted and dropped his head back to the padding beneath him.

Even though her feet weren’t directly under him, Sierra could still feel some warmth soaking through the sleeping bag to reach her. She had to resist the urge to drive her sore feet underneath him as she laid down. “Good night,” she told Laide. Both Laide and Blaziken responded with noises so similar she couldn’t help but laugh as she rolled over and closed her eyes.

* * *

“How are you feeling today?” Laide’s voice roused Sierra from her sleep.

“Mmph. Not as sore as I thought I’d be,” Sierra replied and stretched. “Still not gr–” Her eyes snapped open as her foot wedged under something hot and heavy on the end of her sleeping bag. Blaziken, sitting upright with his injured leg bent for Laide’s inspection, blinked back at her.

Laide looked between them and laughed. “Not you, silly. I was asking the bird.” She returned her attention to the pokémon’s leg before her. “This might hurt a little more, I’ll try to make it as fast as possible. Sierra, can you hand me an aid kit?” Still blinking sleep from her eyes, Sierra watched as Laide pulled on the bandage in just the right way to untie it effortlessly. By the time she had retrieved the requested kit from her bag, Laide had completely unwrapped the bandage and was picking at the gauze underneath.

“With a bad injury like this, you’ll want to change bandaging every day,” she said, selecting a bottle of alcohol and drizzling some of its contents over the gash. Sierra could see Blaziken tense his arms at her ministrations, though feathers obscured the rest of his musculature and he didn’t make a sound. “It’s healing very quickly, I must have found some good berries for it. If only humans could benefit as much as pokémon from them.”

“You’ll still teach me where to find them, right?”

Laide stood up after wrapping fresh bandages around Blaziken’s leg. “Right now, I need you to look after him, so I can’t take you with me. We’ll get you up to speed on survival know-how eventually. You’ll be off exploring on your own before you know it.”

At Laide’s parting comment, Blaziken turned his attention to Sierra. He looked her up and down, but by the end of the action, his eyes were unfocused. He returned to the present only when Sierra reached out to him, grabbing the hand she extended and inspecting her watch. Once he was satisfied, he pulled off his armband, arranging the paper and charcoal it held in place before him, and pointing to the badge-like pin fastened to it. A string of his unintelligible words ended with a cock of his head.

“I’m not sure what you’re asking. That thing means nothing to me.”

Blaziken paused, before pointing at her, then the direction Laide left in, then to her watch, and back at the pin. When Sierra shook her head, he made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a growl, then unfolded his map and showed it to her. He again pointed at her and where Laide was last seen, but this time circled the map with a talon afterwards.

Hesitantly, Sierra fetched her own map and opened it for him. After only a moment’s glace at it, he snatched it out of her hands and placed it on the ground next to his. He slowly twisted his body around until he was lying face-down, propped up on his elbows, and took up a piece of his charcoal. With a few cautious strokes, he made new marks on his map.

His quickening work held Sierra enrapt, and eventually she laid herself down beside him to watch his work more closely. He soon finished his map’s incomplete rendering of the coastline, and started work on a nearby river before stopping to sharpen his charcoal with one of his talons. A smaller point allowed him to make a line of fine symbols along the river’s final stretch. Sierra was still trying to decipher them when a word-like sound finally pulled her attention away. Blaziken tapped a thin white line on her own map. “Oh, that’s a road,” Sierra said. Blaziken nodded and made a short dashed line far into one corner of his own map. Another short string of symbols accompanied it. Blaziken looked back and forth between the maps before adding several longer lines of alien script above it.

Eventually, new curves and marks grew fewer while new lines of symbols grew more frequent. Incomprehensible inscriptions lost Sierra’s interest in his project, and she turned to grab some dried fruit from her bag for a morning snack. Blaziken accepted the ones she offered, but didn’t take his focus off his work.

Her own focus was drawn to the pin on his bandana nearby. Whatever this badge was, he had made a great deal about it, but Sierra couldn’t see what made it so important. There was no text on it, nor any of the markings she was convinced was his own way of writing. The gold button in the middle of the silver disk appeared to be more than just decoration, but when she pushed it nothing happened. Blaziken snatched it out of her hands once he realized she was messing with it. At first he looked upset, but his expression quickly softened. He tied it back around his arm and slipped his map and charcoal back into it.

Only when Blaziken rolled away from her onto his back, denying her the pleasant warmth his body produced, did Sierra realize how close she’d gotten to him while he worked. Laide’s earlier advice popped into her mind, and almost distracted her from realizing what Blaziken was doing.

“No, don’t stand up,” she called out, moving in front of him. She tried to gently push him back down, but he was far stronger than she expected. He managed to turn the tables and ended up using her as a living crutch. In her failure, Sierra found herself wedged under his left arm as he leaned on her. “Fine, if you’re convinced it’ll help,” she huffed.

Blaziken spent several minutes testing the weight he could put on his leg and its range of motion. While avoiding the spur on his calves, Sierra marveled at how human the Blaziken seemed. Despite some obviously avian features, he moved much like a human did. His arm around her shoulders struck her as a very human gesture. She’d never heard of a pokémon who made maps, and heard of few with his level of dexterity. He could talk, and seem to write. She wondered if wild pokémon could display similar behavior, or if it was just a product of a trainer’s influence.

She looked at her watch, before wrapping her right arm around his waist to help support him. This hypothetical trainer hadn’t shown yet, though it was already several hours into daylight.

The pair spent some time limping around the clearing, stopping frequently for breaks. At some points Sierra couldn’t believe how much he was willing to use the leg, at others she felt sure he was doing little but causing himself pain. Whenever she’d ask if he felt okay, he’d always respond affirmatively, no matter what she gleaned from his body language.

By the time they were finishing their second circuit of the small clearing, Sierra had a good feel for how he best moved. She knew when he placed a little too much weight on his bad leg, and could tell when he twisted it at just the wrong angle. Even as his leg gave under him, she had both arms wrapped around him to prevent his collapse. Despite his significantly greater strength, he weighed about as much as she did, if not a little less. Now at her mercy, she had little problem half-steering, half-dragging him back to their shelter.

“Enough of that, now are you going to rest?” She didn’t bother watching for his answer, instead fussing about the edges of the bandage to see if he had started bleeding again. “If you reopen this, I’m not sure I could fix you up as well as Laide. You’ll be sorry, then.” He tried to shove her away, but couldn’t muster as much strength as before. In response, Sierra pushed him back down onto the combined sleeping bags. “Stay,” she commanded. After a hard stare, Blaziken closed his eyes and acquiesced.

For all his earlier drive and later resistance, his breathing soon slowed and shallowed. Sierra slowly slipped his map out from his armband, and opened it up to marvel at his work once more.

* * *

“They look like pokémon footprints. Is he recording the pokémon that live in those areas?” Laide passed the map back to Sierra.

“A lot of them repeat, I don’t think so.” Sierra passed it further along back to Blaziken, who returned it to its normal resting spot. He was fully alert despite waking up only minutes ago, when Laide insisted on checking out his leg after learning of their earlier exertions.

“I’m starting to wonder,” Sierra continued, “if we’ve really got it right. He has the dexterity to write, why doesn’t he write in a known language? Speech makes sense, his mouth isn’t like ours, but I’m sure he could write our letters just as easy as those symbols.”

“You’re not going to convince me pokémon have their own language. Serr, there’s people who study pokémon for a living, know a lot more about them than us. If such things existed we’d have heard about them already. Now I don’t remember anything about Blazikens having above-average intellect for a pokémon, and most pokémon aren’t writing notes for us to read.” Her tone shifted to one similar to an impatient teacher. “His trainer must have taught him.”

“The trainer who hasn’t showed up in over twenty-four hours to pick him up?” Sierra only spared Laide a glance during her reply. Something in Blaziken’s expression while Laide spoke had bothered her. “Do you have a trainer?”

He hesitantly pointed at the badge on his arm and cocked his head.

“What did you expect?” Laide asked.

“Shut up a sec, he didn’t actually answer.” Sierra replied, before looking at the pokémon again. “Did a human give that to you? A human partner?”

Blaziken emphatically shook his head no.

“See?” Sierra looked back at Laide, “Clear as day.”

Laide sat in silence for almost half a minute before shrugging her shoulders. “Maybe he used to have a trainer before and was released.” Laide rolled her eyes. “Who knows, maybe he taught himself to write foot-speak from some ancient ruins. I’m sure that’d be totally up your alley: go dig up some thousand-year-old pot with pictures of feet on it.”

Though she had gritted her teeth at her friend’s flippant remark, she kept her tone light. “No point in going strange places if you’re not taking something back. I think a footprint pot would make a nice conversation starter.”

“Always with your eyes on some prize. Can’t just enjoy hiking and being around nature?”

“We’re out here now, aren’t we?”

“We’re out here wasting our time nursing wildlife. I told you he wasn’t dangerous if he had a trainer. He doesn’t, that changes things. It’s already dark, we’ve lost a whole day sitting here tending to that thing when we could have been exploring and teaching you things, and we have no idea what he’ll do to us once he’s healed. Tomorrow we pack up and get moving again, without him.”

Behind her, Sierra heard Blaziken move. He was in the process of trying to stand when she looked back at him, and she hurriedly moved to assist. He accepted her support, but immediately tried to set a course away from the clearing, at which point Sierra started pulling him back. “Just stop one damn moment!” Sierra worked her way around Blaziken’s body to allow her to look at Laide without turning Blaziken on his bad leg. “What happened to teaching me medical skills? You said it was about being around nature. I have an arm around nature right here, and sometimes it can use your help too. Humans aren’t the only things out here we should care about.”

Looking back up at Blaziken, she saw him staring resolutely into the forest. “As for you, if you go running off now, you’re just going to hurt yourself more. You still need me to walk and I’m not walking with you wherever the hell you think you’re going. Laide’s just prickly when someone asks her a question she can’t answer. She’s done so much for you so far.”

Blaziken slowly relaxed. He looked then to the middle of the clearing, and angled himself to walk another circle just inside it. This new course Sierra obliged.

“One lap only,” Laide called to them. “Whatever good the exercise does, you’ll undo it and then some if you strain yourself.” Silence was given brief reign, then, “If you make it worse I really am going to leave you here, no use throwing away valuable medical supplies on a pokémon with a death wish.” The next time Laide broke the following silence, it was with the sounds that accompanied building a fire.

Blaziken fared no better this time than last. At some points he did even worse, thanks to adopting a less than productive gait. Sierra felt his beak pass over her hair several times, and assumed he was looking back at Laide. For all the extra work his current form took, she figured it probably appeared a little better than his prior efforts at a distance.

When they returned to their shelter, Laide’s fire was already roaring. She had moved her sleeping bag away from Sierra’s, now beside her pack rather than before it. She eyed them warily as Blaziken, this time, managed to make it all the way back to their bedding with Sierra in tow, rather than the inverse. His tough façade broke down a bit when he visibly needed Sierra’s help to return to a somewhat normal sitting position against her backpack. Once he was there, he pulled her down after him, her controlled fall placing her just in front of his body. She quickly looked at his leg to her left to make sure she didn’t aggravate his injury with her landing, but it bore no sign of such and Blaziken hadn’t reacted.

Laide’s expression only deepened. “Just for the record,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone, pointing a finger between the two, “that’s not going to end well.”

Sierra blinked away the last of her surprise as Blaziken leaned forward into her back. “Maybe he just likes me?” she responded, hesitantly.

“Maybe he’s being territorial. Maybe he’s hiding behind you. You have no idea what motivates him, you should treat him like the feral he is.” Sierra heard a snort over her head at that last remark.

“He can speak, write, and reason, I think ‘feral’ might be a little strong,” she said, as much to herself as to Laide. After how human-like he’d been acting, this strange new position must have human purpose as well, right?

“Dangerous attitude. If this ends with me bandaging you up too, he’ll wish he were hiding.”

Laide looked up slightly, and Sierra figured the two of them were staring each other down. “Why don’t we just eat, alright? We didn’t end last night like this, and we’re all the same as we were then. We can start tomorrow on a better foot.” She reached around Blaziken for her bag, but in turning right to avoid his wound, made the process more difficult for herself than she expected. She heard a noise behind her and felt Blaziken tighten his grip, and when she turned back, Laide was placing a significant pile of berries before them.

“Picked them for him, may as well see that through.” Laide said, now much quieter. Blaziken, for his part, wasted no time making good on her deed, not even shunning half the offering as he did the night before. Sierra looked between the two of them as she opened her own food, and contented herself with the fact they were at least all still here.

* * *

Immersion in pleasant warmth made waking up a slow process. Despite sleeping in an inconvenient reclined pose, Sierra didn’t feel any cramps or soreness. That did not mean discomfort was entirely absent; his beak rested on her head, and she was held down by an awkward weight over her waist. After lifting her opened sleeping bag – now serving as a blanket – she discovered the source of the latter. Blaziken’s scarred arms wrapped around hers and rested on her outer thighs. Thanks to their reclining position, her own arms hung on either side of his waist, affording her no defense from his elbows lightly digging into the top of her hipbones.

While she gently extracted herself from his slumbering embrace, a compact weight slid off her converted bedding to rest between her and Blaziken’s left feet. Sierra picked up Laide’s cell phone when she stood, and knew what she would find when she thumbed it on and put in her friend’s passcode. A note-keeping program was open to a page containing their running conversation, typed out on a single device and passed back and forth for lack of signal reception, from the previous night when Laide wanted to communicate in a way Blaziken couldn’t understand. Three new lines of text appeared within.

[Going to forage some more; maybe if I feed him enough he won’t eat you!]

[Unwrap bandage, unpack gauze, disinfect, new gauze, new bandage, tie securely.]

[Sorry about last night.]

Sierra scrolled back up through the conversation, re-reading snippets that caught her attention out of order. Only some of it was an inevitable extension of their quarrel, and more reasoned in silence than in speech. Most were the same irreverent inanities the two always talked about, and Sierra wondered why she had felt a need to apologize this morning.

A curious trill sounded immediately to the left of her head, startling her to fumbling the phone. Once she had restored her grip, she took a step forward and turned around to face Blaziken, still hunched over as he had to look over her shoulder in such a literal fashion. “Good morning. Please don’t do that.”

A short string of his odd words answered her, and his head tipped down as he stood upright.

Sierra only now realized he had stood not only on his own, but with little enough effort she didn’t hear him when he did. His stance informed her his leg pained him even with almost no weight on it, but he was surer of his balance today than yesterday. “Can you sit back down? I need to look at your leg.” She watched as he complied with motions more fluid than she’d seen from him before, before kneeling beside him. “Now bend your knee, just a little. Thanks.”

Laide’s knot came undone with a gentle tug in just the right direction. The bandaging unwrapped easy and clean, though some blood still marred the gauze beneath. The gash, visible from underneath his short leg feathers thanks to the gap it made in them, was now fully sealed. In most places solid clotting closed the wound, but from either end new skin encroached. Sierra lifted the small bottle of alcohol from her aid kit and opened it, but when she looked back at the wound, she couldn’t find any openings that might need disinfecting. Still, she trickled it over the whole length, just in case. She patted new gauze down over its length before wrapping a length of bandaging off her roll. After she cut it off and held both ends in her hands, she realized she couldn’t remember how Laide’s knot worked. Instead, she hurriedly tied the ends together with a square knot and positioned it so it wouldn’t cause discomfort if struck. Blaziken made a light sound in his throat, a vocalization Sierra didn’t remember from Laide’s ministrations, and Sierra gave him a smile as she packed her kit up again. She sat down beside him, and soon thoughts of his quick recovery turned to thoughts of the previous night.

It struck her that she hadn’t spent a night with anyone outside intimate encounters – and even those weren’t numerous, in fact rarer than she’d like – since she was a young child. His very avian expressions of curiosity as she and Laide passed the cell phone back and forth dented but did not destroy her view of him as eerily human. As if that wasn’t strange enough, leaning against him was weirdly comfortable, enough so to lull her to sleep unexpectedly before she could arrange to spend the night alone.

“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, because that was a better night’s sleep than some I’ve had on my own bed with that serious muscle relaxing you had going on, but why did you want me so close?”

Blaziken pointed to the bandage she just tied. An interesting way of showing gratitude, but the gratitude itself she understood. Maybe he was aware the muscle-soothing effects she attested to and wanted her to relax.

“Is that all?”

After a brief hesitation, Blaziken pointed at Laide’s phone, resting atop Sierra’s backpack behind them.

“Laide? Sometimes she has a temper, and can sound pretty serious when she talks about swinging that hatchet of hers around, but I don’t think she’d actively hurt you. If you use me as a shield you’ll probably piss her off, though.”

After a grunt, Blaziken started to say something, but stopped in what seemed to be the middle of a long sentence or short explanation. He locked eyes with Sierra for several seconds before looking down at the ground, absentmindedly fiddling with the bandana tied around his arm.

Sierra gazed at him for a few moments more before sighing. Now more than ever she wished that for all his speech, she could understand him. Still, he was clearly uncomfortable, and that he could take comfort from her filled her with a strange pride. “Don’t worry about Laide, okay? If anything happens I’ll handle it again. She really is a good person.”

“Don’t go filling his head with lies, now,” Laide’s voice called out from the other side of the tree. Blaziken snorted as Sierra twisted towards her voice as she continued, “Everyone knows I’m a huge bitch. I got that certificate for it, remember? It’s hanging over my desk and admire it every day I’m home.”

“I still don’t know why you’re not carrying it around and flaunting it to every stranger you meet,” Sierra laughed. She waited until Laide was in sight, then, “He’s healing very fast. He can stand without help, but I think he still needs help walking.”

“I’m telling you, it’s something about those berries. As for walking; are you up to it? You convinced me not to leave him behind, but if he’s mobile and nobody’s coming for him, we have no reason to be here. If he can walk, we will walk. Can he walk?”

Sierra looked to Blaziken, who nodded back at her. “If he thinks so, I’ll help him out.”

“Good! We’ll take frequent breaks so he can rest up, don’t want to overdo it. Break down and pack up.”

After tossing Laide her phone, Sierra packed up the rest of her gear, hitching it to the proper points on her backpack. Just as she was snapping her sleeping bag into place, she heard a rustle from above. The tarp that had served as their roof settled onto her back and all around her. Once she had extracted herself from it, she saw Blaziken, looking apologetic, kneeling by one of the stakes she had secured the rope with. Behind him, Laide held back laughter.

“Yeah, real funny,” Sierra said as she started to fold it up. She kicked it over to Laide when finished, and shrugged her pack on. She walked over to Blaziken afterwards, who put his left arm over her shoulders as she helped him up.

“For once you’re carrying more than I am,” Laide said, walking behind her. She took Sierra’s sleeping bag and some more minor pieces of equipment off her pack and knelt down to secure it to her own. Then she pulled out a map and her compass. “Off we go again. Call out when he needs a break, we’ll take as long as necessary.”

“Hold on.” Sierra turned to Blaziken after considering one of the small Repel bottles from her pack. “Do you live nearby? We can take you there if you do.” Blaziken looked first to her for a moment, then at Laide for longer. “I told you not to worry about her,” the comment earned her a sideways glance from her friend before she continued, “Show me where.”

It was still another couple moments before Blaziken took out his claw-drawn map. He pointed at a spot near the northeast corner just before Laide arrived. When handed her map, he indicated similarly.

“That’s not too bad,” Laide said. “Assuming we move half the pace we made at first, we should make that in three days.” She looked back to her compass, then into the distance. “We’ll get to the river first, finding a crossing is going to be a priority.”

Sierra looked back down at the Repel in her hand, then up at Blaziken, before sighing and putting it back in her bag. Surely, wild pokémon would be driven off by the two-meter monster who had half-buried her in his side. That’s how it worked for trainers, wasn’t it?

After Laide had sprayed her own Repel over her person, she waved at the other two to follow her, and set off into the woods.

* * *

After moving with Blaziken the day before, Sierra already knew what to look for when he flagged, though he still refused to let her know, himself. True to her word, Laide stopped every time she called for a time-out. The first few stops required Sierra to force Blaziken to stop, the ones following only needed harsh and insistent scolding.

Through the afternoon, she managed to put out of her mind how Blaziken greatly increased her load despite Laide’s assistance with her gear. Her focus narrowed to two things; the movements of the body next to her, and the position of the body ahead of her. She lost herself to them easily, especially paying close attention to the actions of his muscles.

It surprised her then when Blaziken pulled back on her shoulders, though she didn’t notice anything wrong with how he moved and they’d been moving at what felt like a brisk pace. Only when she inhaled deeply to call out did she realize how much her breath burned her throat. She dropped to one knee in the midst of a hacking fit.

Beside her, Blaziken belted out a two-tone cry loud enough to startle her cough away. Laide immediately whipped around and pointed back at them. “Now that was a classic Blaziken call!” She hustled over to where Sierra now sat, and knelt down in front of her. “Our friend can’t be articulate all the time, I guess. At least he told us when you stopped him, didn’t even need the walkie-talkies.” She braced Sierra from the opposite side as Blaziken leveraged himself against her into a kneeling position of his own.

“No, he stopped me,” Sierra croaked, while grasping at the side of her backpack for a water bottle.

Concern shot across Laide’s features. “Please pay attention to yourself as well! I can’t have you collapsing on me, Serr.” Then, when she saw Blaziken extract Sierra’s water bottle himself to hand it over, “How sweet. What is she going to do when you’re not around, big guy?”

Her comment stopped Blaziken in the middle of handing the bottle over, and it took Sierra a couple seconds to realize what he had been doing to finish the job herself. She took long, greedy swigs, enjoying the sensation of swallowing water once the first painful gulp was out of the way.

“At least something’s looking out for you, if you’re not going to do it yourself and I’m too busy scouting ahead,” Laide said as she sat back. She checked her watch. “We’ve made better progress than I expected. We can stop here for the night if you want, it’ll be getting dark in about an hour anyway.” When Sierra nodded, Laide reached over and pulled Sierra’s backpack’s straps off her before looking at Blaziken. “Alright, Feathers, your turn. Help her to that tree over there. Looks like I’m setting up the shelter today.” She moved off to the indicated direction, dragging Sierra’s pack behind her.

Despite the command, the pair spent several minutes resting where they dropped.

Standing without her assistance this time, Blaziken braced himself on his good leg and hauled Sierra up. This time he stood to her left, and slipped his right arm under rather than over her shoulders. Still, it took only a couple steps for Sierra to hear hissing breaths and feel the start of trembling, and she quickly shrugged Blaziken’s assistance off. “I’m not the one who needs help here,” she mumbled. It took another minute for the two tired individuals to silently negotiate a return to their original positions. Without her gear, his weight was more manageable, and they made it to their destination without issue.

Instead of using the whole tarp as one broad roof as Sierra had, Laide had elected to use a single fairly straight branch as the central support for a more traditional tent shape, tarp walls slanting down at angles from it towards the ground. She had even managed to lay out their sleeping bags, one on each side, by the time Sierra and Blaziken arrived.

Sierra dragged herself inside and collapsed face-down on her sleeping bag as soon as she reached it. Blazkien crawled in on all fours to sit beside her, once more using her backpack as a back rest. She tried to summarize how she felt to him, but only managed, “Mrrphh.” He responded with a sound so similar she’d have laughed if she had her breath back fully yet.

“That’s right,” Laide stuck her head inside to say, “But don’t think I’m letting you off that easy. I’m not letting you two sleep until you’ve eaten something. I won’t be gone for long, better stay awake until I’m back.”

Sierra, despite her best efforts, passed that challenge.

* * *

When Sierra awoke the next morning, she realized that as tired as they were the night before, she and Blaziken had managed an impressive feat of ergonomics. One end of her sleeping bag sat on top of her backpack and under Blaziken’s head and left arm, his few effects nearby. The other end somehow still managed to comfort her legs and rear, despite her position curled up in the curve his body made, leaning on his chest and hemmed in by his legs. His right arm rested on her waist and extended across her stomach to weakly pin her to him as before. Even in this strange position, his heat had soothed away the possibility of aches.

Bleary eyes barely caught sight of Laide slipping out of the tent. She smiled to herself at the knowledge that this time, she was awake early enough to see her friend’s departure.

After further consideration of their positioning, Sierra threw off his arm and whipped herself around fast enough to startle Blaziken to alertness. Seeing him now awake, she wrapped her hands around his left thigh, pulling it out from under his right and exposing the previous day’s bandages. Such actions prompted him to lodge a muted complaint.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was pushing against it in the night,” Sierra said, finally looking up to meet his eyes as he arranged himself into a more traditional sitting position. “I hope I didn’t hurt you.” He made a loud click in his throat and shook his head. Sierra let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d held.

“I’ll check it at least, I have to change the bandages again anyway.” After fetching her aid kit from her pack, Sierra turned her attention to the bandage. Though the wrapping itself looked fine, her poor knot from the previous day had tightened itself further into insolvability between that day’s exertions and her inattentiveness during the night.

The tiny thing quickly proved intractable to just her fingers, short of sprouting another pair of hands. After close inspection, she figured she could get one compacted loop between her canine teeth, a second between the fingernails of one hand, and her other hand still free to hold the bandage away from his thigh so she didn’t apply hazardous pressure. With careful maneuvering – the lulling warmth of his feathery thigh pressed against her face reminding her she hadn’t yet shaken her morning grogginess – this proved to be an adequate solution, and a short but firm tug freed the bandage from itself.

When she looked back up, she no longer had to take Laide’s word for granted. He was definitely male.

Though making no attempt to hide his visceral response, Blaziken couldn’t hold her eyes when they met his. After she pulled herself back off his legs and propped herself up on an arm he managed to glance her way again. No words issued forth when he opened his mouth to speak, so he quickly closed it.

She reached again for his leg, this time lifting it up at the knee. Not only did this allow her to resume her previous work, but from her current angle it blocked her sight of the issue. With his bandage removed, one part of her mind acknowledged his injury looked vastly better than even the previous day’s incredible progress. While she completed changing the dressing, another part of her mind was trying to deny that she’d seen something just similar enough to the familiar to trigger a visceral response of her own.

By the time he dropped his knee, her vision was already fixed on repacking her bag, but she could see no swelling out of the corner of her eye. As she finished, Blaziken reached out and grabbed one of her hands. She flinched at his touch, for its unfamiliarity rather than her distraction. She’d been avoiding the pointy bits of his anatomy like those that terminated his talons. She struggled to decide if she should avoid the newest member of the pointy anatomy list, and wondered why the answer wasn’t as obvious as she’d have assumed.

It was way too early in the morning to be confronted with this stuff.

Instead, she devoted all her attention to his claw. She turned her hand within his light grasp, singling out one of his talons and examining it. His network of scars even stretched this far, a couple small streaks crisscrossing over the digit a testament to rough living. She thought she spotted what might be a crack in the talon’s nail, but despite turning it to look at it from several angles, she couldn’t be sure.

She covered his claw with her other hand and finally looked at his face again. He looked back at her with a face wonderfully expressive for being so alien. Sheepishness stood out, but she was sure she didn’t imagine those hints of apology, a measure of frustration, and more basic embarrassment she saw beneath. She tried to reassure him with a smile, one she genuinely felt. After all, anything might cause the response he displayed, but he seemed to care how she felt about it.

“I guess you’ve been in a lot of fights,” Sierra said, to try and take both of their minds off it. He nodded. “Well, your last one almost did you in,” she continued. “You’re lucky we found you. Who knows what could have happened if you were left there, out cold and still bleeding.” His expression hardened, but not for long. He again broke eye contact, and she pressed on. “Like Laide said yesterday, if you don’t look out for yourself, you should have someone to look out for you. I could–”

With a couple unintelligible words, Blaziken pulled his claw from her grasp and took to his feet, grabbing his armband and walking out of the tent. Seeing him walk without her assistance hurt as much as surprised her. Maybe it was that he was walking away from her with that question on her lips, like she lost a fight before it even began.

She picked herself up to follow him out.

He hadn’t moved far, just to stand in the open. He looked around the area as Sierra walked up to him, but she couldn’t see anything that might have drawn his attention. He waited until she was right beside him to acknowledge her, with an expression softer than she’d expected.

“Sorry,” she said. “I guess you like your independence?”

He shook his head, looking back down at the bandana he carried. He tapped its ever-present metallic badge before tying it around his arm.

“I’m still not sure what that’s for.”

He paused, looking upward with his head slightly cocked, before shaking it again and sighing. It was obvious to Sierra that she had only sidetracked him from one thing that bothered him to another, but this one she didn’t have any way to understand.

Blaziken put his left arm around her shoulder, as he always did when using her for balance. Now out of habit, her right hand found the far side of his waist. This time, though, he put no weight on her, and that suited her just fine.

* * *

Eventually they found a place where the nearby river slowed and spread over a large shallow area, and Laide brought them to a stop.

“You two may not be attached at the hip anymore, but he might need your help through here. Sometimes even weak currents can play games with your balance, and he’s still an injured Fire-type.” After taking off her shoes, Laide hiked up her pant legs and stepped into the flow. “At least it’s still decently warm.”

While Sierra stopped to remove her own footwear, Blaziken walked down to the water’s edge. He took several tentative steps into it without issue, but when he turned to see Sierra was still getting ready, he stepped out again. The sight of him shaking the water out of the dense plumage surrounding his feet brought Sierra to laughter.

He only entered again once she was beside him, though as much of the trip here, they no longer held each other for progress. No longer stuck halfway into his side, Sierra watched every step he took carefully. Though his footing seemed sure and the water only came up to his knees, once in a while he looked back at Sierra with wide eyes. Those times she made sure to hold her laughter.

“I honestly expected him to fall in,” Laide said as they successfully completed their crossing.

“Come on, with all those scars? I don’t think a little water is going to stop him,” Sierra replied Blaziken muttered something under his breath as he passed where she was drying off her feet to put her shoes back on. He continued until he topped a short hill nearby, examining the terrain beyond.

“Laide, got a sec?” Sierra asked, just barely loud enough for her friend to hear. Laide got the hint and moved closer. “When I was talking with him earlier, he tried to tell me something about that badge of his again. I think it might be keeping him isolated somehow, or reminding him of someone.”

“Could be from a trainer who died, that’d line up with him saying a human didn’t give it to him despite clearly being trained. Instead he took it from one who passed away. Think it might be part of his pokéball?”

“Nah, when I pushed the button nothing happened. Either way,” Sierra waved the particulars off, “I think he’s lonely.”

Laide set her jaw and gave her a hard look. “What are you going to do about it?”

“I want to take him back.”

“Ha!” Laide barked out a laugh, drawing Blaziken’s attention far behind her. Then, once more quiet, “In what, your arms? I think you’re getting a little too invested in this if you think a wild pokémon is just going to crawl into a ball, no matter how much he likes you.”

Sierra glanced over to see Blaziken start approaching them. “Who knows? I can ask him beforehand, and if he accepts, he might not resist. I think it’s worth a shot.”

When she looked over her shoulder to see what had caught Sierra’s attention, Laide sighed and stood. “Serr, if you can pull this off, I’ll hang up my pack and never hike again, I have some serious catching up to do if it’s that easy to get a pokémon. No matter what his background though, he’s still wild now, and you’re getting too invested. I’ll say it again; I don’t think this is going to end well.”

Once more wearing her shoes, Sierra stood as well, and started walking to meet Blaziken. “I’m optimistic.”

“I think that’s your problem,” Laide muttered.

* * *

A quick gust of nighttime breeze brought a shiver over Sierra, prompting Blaziken to wrap his arms around her tighter. She leaned back into his chest further, and absentmindedly raised another slice of dried apple to his head’s height. He snapped it from her loose grip eagerly. Sierra made a mental note that he liked apples the most of all the fruit she had, before she realized she’d told herself to remember this fact twice before already.

Her hand found the bony jagged plate that passed for his cheek, just as warm as the rest of him. He pressed his head against her palm, an act she only registered when one of the spikes threatened to bite into it. She withdrew her hand but made no comment; the dancing fire before her conspired with Blaziken’s heat from behind to hypnotize her into silence, allowing its crackle to war with the river’s flow nearby for aural dominance.

A shred of regret crossed her mind that she had ever mentioned how cold tonight was compared to the ones before. She never intended to stay up later than Laide, but Blaziken hadn’t let her sleep until she was sufficiently warm, all but dragging her closer to the fire and placing her in his lap. The fruit ritual let him know she was still awake, in absence of words. Or maybe he was just keeping her as warm as possible until she drifted off.

Atop the heat and the flame, his attention itself was intoxicating. Sierra’s few stabs at romance always ended as short flings, and Laide – shortest of them all – though now her best friend was a strong proponent of tough love. That a two-meter tall bird in the middle of the woods would take her into such close proximity baffled her. Though much more able now than when he’d first taken her in close, and the intervening time proved Laide no threat, he insisted on being around her as much as possible. She couldn’t understand why.

Unless the bird wanted to append itself to that list of flings, she thought, as a free piece of her mind returned to the morning’s events. It reminded her that encounter’s subject waited dormant near her tailbone, and reminded her of her body’s reaction to it. The rest of her mind pulled itself out of her flame-hypnosis to scold her for thinking about interspecies intimacy. Once these higher functions returned to their fiery prison, the free piece of her mind admitted that, like the apples, such scolding had also occurred twice before already.

Damn this mental battle. Why couldn’t she just enjoy some contact for once?

Turning in his lap to sit over his right leg, she twisted herself to finally return his hug. He lifted his left leg to give her a backrest in that position, and lowered his head so that bony cheek-plate met her own cheekbone. She realized that she hadn’t been only smelling the blaze she had tonight managed to light, as Blaziken himself possessed a scent similar to a wood fire. No, she’d discovered that twice before as well; another flashback to her face pressed into his thigh.

A pair of shrunken pokéballs shifted within her pocket during her maneuver, reminding her of her plans. If Blaziken was okay with it, she didn’t see why he couldn’t just acquiesce to being captured. With Laide asleep and the two of them enjoying each other’s company in peace, she couldn’t think of a better time to ask him. However, when she tried to say something, a yawn escaped first. A plaintive noise followed it when Blaziken took the yawn as a cue to stand. Sierra lamented the ways her body betrayed her as Blaziken hauled her to her feet.

Now relieved of the fire’s hold on her mind, she realized Laide would hound her to hell and back if she forgot to put it out. Her collapsible shovel laid nearby, and it took her three tries to snap the blade into place. Her first scoop of dirt missed the fire completely, but the rest hit home and quenched the flame. The river triumphed, but Sierra couldn’t give it the listen it demanded.

After dropping the shovel where she stood, she let Blaziken guide her back into the tent Laide had erected. She had no focus for body logistics, so just collapsed onto her sleeping bag. She heard Blaziken utter something which she had to be wrong in thinking was a too-human chuckle before he gently displaced her to make room for himself. Once they had settled out, she’d ended up draped over his left side while he laid on his back, his arm the only thing keeping her from falling into the slanted tent wall. Their positions felt similar enough to how they often stood on the trail to immerse her in recent memories.

* * *

Sounds of Laide preparing to leave drew Sierra out of her sleep. She watched her friend check some supplies while she listened to Blaziken’s steady breathing and heartbeat beneath her head. Laide looked her way just before she left, and Sierra quickly closed her eyes to feign sleep. A long time passed before she heard Laide exit.

Once her friend departed, Sierra rolled over Blaziken to his other side, the process waking him up. She propped herself up on her left arm while her right rested on his chest. When he looked at her, she smiled. “Heavy sleeper, aren’t you?” Blaziken finished his long process of focusing on her, then slowly nodded, drawing a laugh from her. “Well, bring your leg over here so I can look at it.”

Sierra fetched a knife from her bag. She carefully lifted the bandage off his leg and cut it, then quickly unraveled and discarded it before returning the knife. With the gauze lifted his scabbing, and beneath was a long, thick line of new skin peeking out from between his short limb feathers. She braced his thigh between her hands and stretched his skin in a way that cleared the obstructing feathers to get a clearer look. Its line described a wound as terrible as she remembered, ruling out flawed recollection and leaving her gaping at how he’d healed so well.

When she looked back at him, his body once more displayed his physical response to her actions. He didn’t look away from her this time despite still looking anxious. The moments he didn’t hold her eyes he spent looking over her body. She straightened under his scrutiny, looking back at his not-so-strange flesh and running through her mental debate from the night before. She decided acting on this may entice him to stick around, only to find her hand already wrapped around his length.

His expression took an entirely different character as she slowly started to stroke him, pleasure displacing anything else. The part of him in her grip felt even warmer than the rest of his body. With her hand around it for reference, she could see it was not only a good shape but also a good size if she wanted to make his satisfaction mutual. Driven by those thoughts, her free hand slipped below her waistband. Feeling her own wetness made a second decision easy in the wake of her first.

Her hands ceased tending to their sexes to busy themselves with disrobing. Curiosity replaced pleasure as Blaziken watched her peel off her clothing. With one hand already inside her pants, they were the first to go, and when she revealed herself he understood her purpose. His claws sought out her skin beneath her shirt as she finished removing her pants, and then tried to work their way beneath her sports bra once she started peeling off her shirt. Worried that his talons would damage her garments, she pushed him down onto her sleeping bag as she finished handling them.

He crooned as she repositioned herself over him and rubbed his tip through her folds to prepare. A strand of her readiness bridged them when she looked down at him and locked eyes again. In her hesitation searching for some sign in his expression, he grabbed her hips and thrust up, her breathing catching in a loud gasp as he buried himself deep inside her.

Nothing could have prepared Sierra for the radiant heat she felt within herself. Blaziken’s furnace of a body resonated with her arousal to produce a sensation she was sure she’d flinch from if on her skin, but, deep inside her, it only brought pleasure. She felt like his shaft was melting her from the inside, and struggled to keep a steady pace over him.

Blaziken’s claws still held her hips, his talons delivering small exciting pricks. His great strength arrested her motions and he started shifting under her, sending a thrill through her when he hilted into her, and held her there as he sat upright. Enough presence of mind remained with her to avoid his calf spurs, and his waist proved suitable to wrap her legs around. He started moving her over his length, the sensation driving her to hug him tightly and bury her face in his thick neck and shoulder plumage. Once she started moving on her own again, he returned her embrace.

His warmth soaked into her from all angles, from their thighs pressed together to her breasts buried into the beige feathers on his chest. He angled his head down to nip at one of her ears, another sharp prick adding to her stimulation. Only their heavy breathing made sound, since his coat muffled the contact between their bodies. Beneath their union, she could feel her fluids clinging to his feathers, leaking out from around him during their act. When she pushed down against him, this dampness conspired with his feathers to brush against her bud, adding a final shock every time he was deepest within her.

A nudge against her head gently pushed her head out from his neck. Blaziken moved the top of his beak to her forehead and nudged her away again before pulling his head back to look into her eyes. Instead of some wild lust, he looked at her with calm enjoyment. She looked down to where he entered her, watching him disappear into herself repeatedly, before feeling Blaziken lick her forehead drew her attention back upwards. At the next peak of their motion she planted a kiss atop his own head where it split into two bony spines. A deep trill thanked her.

Only with this gulf between their chests did she realize she had been breathing in time with him, and left to her own tempo she started panting. Lifting her hips up and pressing them down again became a full-body exertion as his intense heat inside her continued to build, spreading weakness through the muscles of her thighs and waist. She had to pull herself up by his shoulders to compensate. Soon even these motions became irregular, and her panting heightened as she desperately struggled to find another way to draw stimulation from his shaft.

Blaziken understood her labors and started to move the pair again, drawing a moan from her as he drove into her a second time down to his base. He gently laid her down on the grass beside them, looming over her to complete the reversal from his first penetration. Now that he was fully in control, he hammered into her faster, turning her panting into gasping with every impact. Free from any further effort on her part, Sierra focused on the feeling of him sliding in and out of her, and the sight of his body working above her. He stared back at her, his expression still calm, but hardened by exertion.

With every stroke, she could feel herself start to tighten around him, her body clenching at his shaft desperate for its prize. An increased pace rewarded her efforts, pushing her further and further to losing herself. She tried holding it off, but Blaziken collapsed on top of her, devoting all his energy to their burning connection and enveloping herself in his intense body heat. The sudden rush of warmth and touch – especially the brush of his broad chest feathers across her breasts – pushed her over her limits, and she wrapped her arms around his back and squeezed him through shuddering breaths just as her body clenched their joining.

Bucking against him provoked his own climax, first sending a shudder through his body before she felt him rhythmically throb inside her. She opened her eyes to look up at him when he lifted himself above her slightly, squeezing his eyes shut and slightly opening his beak. Alarm poked through her just-receding bliss as small twinned bursts of flame licked the sides of his face, accompanied by a cough.

Her alarm was banished when he released his seed inside her immediately after, completely filling her tightened space and then some as her body clamped around him again. Her resultant cry was not exclusively of ecstasy; his fluids were intensely hot and brought with them a small sparkle of pain. The extra sensation drove her back over the edge she had just retreated from. A long moan followed her cry as she clutched at his arms and writhed in his shadow, then finally stilled.

Though she was now totally limp, Blaziken lifted her easily with one arm at her back while still propping himself up with the other, using the last of his strength to turn on it and place him underneath her as he too collapsed. Afterglow fueled her desire to soak up all of his heat, spreading herself out to touch as much of him with as much of her as she could and still hold him inside her. Their heavy breathing shifted her on top of him a bit with every inhalation, prompting a weak buck of her back whenever it led to his still-hardened organ shifting within and a little more of his finish escaping.

After their breathing slowed to a calm rest, Sierra reached back to grab her discarded clothing. “Think you can get us to the river to clean up?” she mumbled to the side of his face, where she assumed his ear hid somewhere. He responded by finally lifting her off his flesh, drawing from her a sound both disappointed and satisfied. She marveled at the rapid healing he displayed as he stood up with her in his arms, exiting the tarp shelter and setting off towards the water nearby with only a little limp in his step.

* * *

Sierra pulled herself closer to Blaziken when another glimpse of red caught her eye through the underbrush. She was glad he had decided to once more walk while holding her close, after that morning. Though she never saw this red thing in any detail, she was sure it had been following them for some time.

The sounds of waves rolling up the shore reached them through the woods, and they soon broke out onto a beach. Ahead of them, Laide stopped to check her map, but Blaziken steered Sierra out to walk down the shoreline without pausing. Laide jogged to catch up to them after she’d stored her map again, coming up on Sierra’s left and flashing her phone’s lit display at her.

[You two are back to inseparable. How’s he coming?]

A light blush formed on Sierra’s cheeks as she considered Laide’s word choice. If her friend knew, however, she gave no other indication. Sierra grabbed her friend’s phone and typed her reply before giving it back.

[I think he’s almost entirely healed, it’s crazy!]

The phone exchanged hands again.

[Good, I was worried I’d have to blow more supplies on him. What are you going to do?]

Sierra looked up at Blaziken, who glanced back before returning to watching where they walked. He showed no ability or inclination to read.

[I’ll ask him tonight. We had a nice exchange this morning, I think it might have helped.]

This time after reading her message, Laide pocketed her phone. “If you say so,” she muttered, before picking up her pace.

Blaziken jerked her to the right towards the forest. When she had recovered her senses and footing, she found a piece of driftwood terminating their old path, and she looked up to see him regarding her. After a soft-spoken indecipherable sentence, he looked back ahead and started them forward again. Sierra smiled. Laide might be skeptical, but she was sure that he cared about her and would stay.

A rustle and a strange call sounded from behind and to their right. Blaziken spun in her arm and pushed her behind him to confront this new threat. Even dropping into a battle stance, Sierra could feel from the muscles she learned over the past few days he was unsure, or unsteady. She poked her head around his side to see what concerned him.

Several red crustaceans arrayed themselves before him, each over half a meter long but for a larger one in front with a star topping its head. Sierra remembered Laide told her to watch out for them, because they tended to be territorial: Corphish and Crawdaunt. She clutched Blaziken closer to herself, and braced against the dirt when Blaziken’s wrists ignited into gauntlets of flame. “Laide?”

At her call, the leader advanced several paces, brandishing one claw. Blaziken tried to lunge at it but only made a single long step with Sierra’s arms wrapped around his waist. He spoke a string of his pokémon words in a loud, firm voice. His one step and attempt at communication was only met with further posturing and an inarticulate cry, and the Crawdaunt scuttled even closer, now only a few meters away.

The next wordless scream came from behind, and both Sierra and Blaziken turned to find its source. Laide ran full tilt towards them, lacking her pack but toting her assembled shovel in one hand and her hatchet in the other. Her shout only stopped once she’d planted herself between Blaziken and the Crawdaunt, jabbing her shovel at the air in front of the rogue pokémon.

Blaziken tried to shove himself forward again, but Sierra dug in and held him back a second time. She continued to pull him backwards away from the battle against his protests, shoving his good leg out from under him every time he tried to counteract her. “We’re clear!” she shouted. Laide didn’t look back but raised her hatchet at them and took a couple steps back.

Crawdaunt chose that time to make a move, snatching at her extended shovel. Laide pulled it back out of reach, then thrust it forward again, leaning down on the return stroke so it skimmed the beach’s surface to kick sand at her opponent. Crawdaunt belatedly raised a claw to shield its face, repurposing the act to try and clear its vision. It brought its other claw – faintly glowing – down on where it had last seen the shovel, but Laide had since moved it. A ring of sand erupted where its claw hit the ground.

Laide took another two steps back before skimming her shovel over the sand again. This time, when the sand hit her foe, a star-shaped glow shone through the cloud and several projectiles slammed into her shovel’s blade. With her shovel’s end pinned to the sand, Crawdaunt had no problems grabbing onto it. Laide tried to shake it off by shoving the shovel back towards it, but Crawdaunt held firm, then took several steps towards her.

Laide looked back at Blaziken and Sierra, then towards her opponent. She tugged on the shovel a couple times but Crawdaunt still maintained its grip. As soon as her opponent took another step forward, though, she gave a mighty yank, and the pokémon was pulled forward and down into the sand. At the same time she brought her hatchet down through a high arc. The head bit just above Crawdaunt’s elbow and severed its claw clean off.

The rogue looked down at its missing limb, then back up at Laide. She swung her shovel – claw still clamped to the end – in a wide horizontal swing in front of it and its companions and roared, “Next?” The Crawdaunt started to walk backwards, still trying to clean sand out of its eyes with its remaining claw. The Corphish around it stared as it broke and ran, then followed suit shortly after.

She turned back to the pair and released a big breath. “I was hoping the sand would scare them away, but I guess not. At least I don’t have to forage for food for him today.” She waved the claw on the tip of her shovel around a bit as she walked passed them. Sierra could see her trembling before she tried to pry the claw off.

Blaziken stared at her with an intense loathing Sierra didn’t think was even possible for his face to display. Once Laide had passed, he turned his glare on her, and shoved her off him before stalking off to follow their violent protector. Sierra’s breath hitched in her throat as she hurried after them.

“You just took its arm off, how is it going to survive?”

“They grow back, happens to them all the time in fights amongst themselves,” Laide said as she replaced her tools and shouldered her pack again. “You’ve been skimping on your Repels, haven’t you? We still have another hour before we need to re-apply but you’re getting jumped.”

Sierra looked to the ground and mumbled just loud enough to hear, “I didn’t want to make Blaziken uncomfortable.”

“Two bodies, no Repel,” Laide said, looking back and forth between the two before settling on the pokémon. “You better be grateful. She advocated for you, put herself at risk for your comfort, and then had to hold you back against a bunch of water-types while you were injured. What are you going to do when she’s not around?” She turned ahead and restarted her forward march.

Though Sierra expected Laide’s comments – so similar to her own a couple days prior – to upset Blaziken, when he looked back at her it was with a much softer expression. After muttering to himself, he bundled her back into his side and the two continued after Laide down the beach.

* * *

Sierra spun in Blaziken’s lap to look up at his fire-lit face. “We’re almost there, aren’t we?” At his nod she continued, “What will you do now?”

She realized how silly asking that question through the language barrier was when Blaziken started speaking but stopped, shaking his head. Whatever it was, he summarized it with a shrug.

“Do you think you could stay with me?”

Blaziken looked down at her with wide eyes for a long moment. Sierra almost felt like she was floating, until he looked away from her. Then he sighed, closed his eyes, and let himself fall back against her backpack behind him. She felt like she collapsed as well, despite sitting perfectly upright. He wrapped his arms around her then, pulling her down on top of his chest and squeezing her, throwing her heart aloft again.

After she took a moment to think it over, she whispered, “Does this mean, ‘Yes?’ ” She listened to his quickening heartbeat as she waited for an answer that didn’t come.

Laide stared at her from inside their shelter. Through the distance and the light thrown off by her friend’s flashlight – illuminating a small spherical form beside the map with a distinctive red lid – Sierra couldn’t tell just what Laide was feeling. When she returned to her map, Sierra closed her eyes.

Blaziken made a strangled sound in his throat and tightened his arms around her again. Sierra returned his hug and tried to clear her mind to focus on his warmth. “Just sleep on it, you can tell me in the morning.”

He finally nodded.

* * *

The first thing Sierra noticed when she woke up was how badly her shoulder hurt. Rolling it as she sat up from her sleeping bag, she took in the near-total silence and lack of activity around her. Only the sounds of surf reached her ears, followed closely by the smell of salt spray. Sunlight filtered down through the broken canopy of the beach’s tree line, and reflected off the sand beyond.

That sand nearly scorched her feet moments later as she bolted out onto the open shoreline, frantically looking up and down it. Two figures in the distance caught her eye, one low with a large backpack and the other red. She sprinted towards them without delay, still-waking muscles joining her shoulder in a chorus of soreness.

When she arrived, Blaziken and Laide had been staring each other down. Blaziken looked up at her first, the flames about his wrists immediately disappearing and his stance loosening. Laide turned where she sat on the ground, watching Sierra’s approach casually. “About time you showed up.”

Sierra almost fell over when she arrived. Between breaths she gasped out, “What are you two doing?” Blaziken hurried to her side, allowing her to lean against him while she recovered her breath.

Laide made a gesture indicating him as he passed her. “Ask him. He didn’t want me going over there, and I kept him here for you.”

Her last five words finished what Sierra’s exertions started, bringing her to her knees in front of Blaziken. “You’re leaving?”

Kneeling himself, Blaziken started speaking before trailing off in a frustrated growl. As if his stare alone could impart heat, Sierra felt her cheeks warm, before she couldn’t hold his eyes for watery vision. The rest of her body warmed when he enveloped her. He made a soft cooing sound in her ear that she desperately wished she could understand.

After he separated them, he quickly untied the bandana around his arm and showed it to her, the map and charcoal behind it falling to the sand. He executed a string of gestures; pointing at his badge, then behind him, then to Sierra and making a sharp horizontal chopping motion.

“Whatever that badge means, we can’t come?”

Blaziken looked down at the ground and nodded.

“And… you won’t come with us.”

He glanced back up briefly before his gaze returned downward and he shook his head.

Sierra sat back on her feet. “I just thought we had something, is all.”

Claws gripped her shoulders firmly but without causing harm. Blaziken nodded again, much more vigorously than before. He took the claw holding his armband off her but hesitated as he looked down at what he held within it. One snort and a swift motion later, his badge was no longer fastened to his bandana. When he tied the yellow cloth back together, it was around her wrist. He pointed at the now-freed badge and back at her.

None of this made any sense to Sierra anymore. She held the bandana in her opposite hand, feeling his residual heat. She wanted to shrink down and wrap it around herself, ignoring everything else happening. Blaziken gave her a taste of that wish with a second hug that she halfheartedly returned. More to articulate her own thoughts than to ask a true question, she mumbled, “Will I ever see you again?”

Blaziken surprised her by nodding for a third time. She pushed his arms away to pull back from him, looking at him with wide eyes. He held up his badge, tapping it with a free talon, then pointed to the ground.

Everything came down to that badge, the one Sierra couldn’t learn anything about. That pin that brought him down, even if she tried to lift him up. Now, however it bound him ensnared her as well. A spark of anger flashed into being; why should something so incomprehensible hold her happiness hostage, wrapped in a mystery?

When Blaziken gathered up his fallen materials and stood, pointing to the island than repeating those last two gestures, she let a little of that anger out. “Then go.”

He looked at her and opened his mouth to say something, stopped, then found his voice to say a short sentence. Then, with a nod, he turned and started walking across the sandbar to the island behind.

Laide stood as he passed her, regarding his departure for several moments before coming up to Sierra. “You won’t get another chance after this,” she said, expanding a pokéball and handing it to Sierra. “Throw it now, better than nothing.”

Pushing the ball away, Sierra shook her head. “No use, he’d just break out, and then he’d be mad at me. That’s not taking it, that’s losing it.” Her chance was already gone. Not a chance to throw something at him, but a chance to win his loyalty.

Her friend looked back at her, confused. “What would you be losing?”

Sierra was forced to look away when her vision swam too much to hold focus on Blaziken’s retreating form. “He told me we’d see each other again,” she sniffed, “It’s all about the badge. I’ll discover what it means. Whatever it…” She trailed off before she was interrupted by sobbing. She just wanted to be left there until the necessary knowledge just appeared in her head. Her little flame of anger was snuffed out by a gust of hopelessness, no longer sure what to do or where to go. She held onto Laide’s extended arms like they were lines thrown her way in turbulent waters.

Laide hauled Sierra to her feet. Her ensuing hug wasn’t nearly as warm as Blaziken’s, but it comforted Sierra just the same. “Calm down, Sierra. You didn’t see the look on his face when he walked away, like I did. He was so sure, so confident. If he said you’ll see him again, he knows it’ll happen no matter what.” Sierra nodded, as much to reinforce it for herself as to acknowledge what Laide had said. All the more important she did her part to unravel this.

Laide didn’t say any more for the long time they held each other, while Sierra dampened her shoulder.

“Laide, can I ask you something?” Sierra asked when she’d calmed, the question interrupted by only a single hitched breath.

“Anything, Serr.”

Sierra smiled weakly, “Where’s the ‘I told you so’?” Laide pushed her away slightly to give her a look that was half-reproachful and half-confused, so she continued, “About the motivations and the too-invested stuff.”

Laide shook her head and stepped back. “Well, I don’t have to say it, now. Are you okay to get moving, or do you want to rest a little more?”

“I’ll be fine,” Sierra said, though only half believed it herself.

“Then let’s get back to camp for your stuff.” After consulting her map and compass, Laide started walking back down the shoreline.

Sierra looked down at the yellow bandana tied around her forearm. She unbuckled her watch and resettled the cloth over the slightly reddened skin revealed. As soon as the watch went back on over the bandana, she noticed it felt much better. The remaining warmth of the cloth soothed her wrist as she looked to Laide’s retreating form. This one, at least, she could follow.

* * *

** SIX YEARS LATER **

* * *

 

Sierra fell backwards onto her bed, arms spread out wide. Her dress uniform still fit well enough that the action didn’t provoke discomfort, but she unbuttoned the jacket anyway. Even if the intervening year did not make her unfamiliar to her uniform, it was already very unfamiliar to her.

Her fingers rolled a shrunken pokéball. After some consideration, she expanded it and popped it open. A bolt of light heralded an echoing hiss and the glowing silhouette of her old co-worker and new partner. “Welcome home, Echo.”

The Flygon looked around his surroundings. Her bedroom wasn’t as visually engaging as their former base, but Echo still took his time absorbing every scant detail. Eventually, his wings emitted a dull drone before shifting to new sounds, as Echo used his wing’s precise vibrations to imitate speech. “Is nice, Sarge.”

“We’re both retired now, you don’t need to call me that.”

“Yes, Sarge.”

Sierra laughed before returning to his previous thought. “Isn’t it? I like it sparse, feels less busy to me. Honestly I thought you’d complain about it, after so much barracks life. I was worried it’d feel a little too much like your old life.”

Echo poked his head outside the door’s frame, examining the hallway beyond. “Life was fine. This more so.”

“More fine? I think we need to work on your vocabulary a little more.”

“If you say so.” He walked over to her nightstand and picked up a bulky wristwatch fastened to a yellow bandana, all sorts of little gadgetry fixed to and around the timepiece. He held it up to her with a wordless cock of his head.

“That, my friend, is the symbol of your new life. I’m an explorer, scrounging fields for treasures instead of landmines, and now so are you. We need to pay the bills somehow, after all.”

His wings buzzed in a tone she’d learned to interpret as curiosity, in the time before he’d learned to speak. He delicately ran a claw over one of the three long beige feathers affixed to the bandana, and examined the tiny pokéball holder secured to one side of the watch, a miniaturized ball beside a single empty socket within. “Other?”

“No, just reminders that there really are some true mysteries out there. I’m determined to crack them. We’ll do it together.”

Echo considered the collection of devices a bit longer before gently putting it back down and looking back towards the hall. “Mess?”

“Yeah, we missed lunch during the ceremony, didn’t we? Let me change out of this and I’ll look to getting us some food.”

Echo walked out of her bedroom and closed the door behind him. Sierra shrugged off her jacket and started on the shirt beneath when one of the feathers displayed on her gear caught her eye, slightly askew. She straightened it out and smoothed it over with a faint smile. Was it slightly warmer than the surrounding room, or did she just let memory get in the way of her fingers?

“My recent companion came back to me today,” she said softly. “You’re next.”


End file.
